


Bring It All Back Home

by HelixDoubleHelix



Series: World Without Robin 'verse [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen, jason is...a baby, no i don't know anything about the court of owls, no that won't stop me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26020636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelixDoubleHelix/pseuds/HelixDoubleHelix
Summary: In this world, Bruce Wayne never went to Haly's Circus on a warm, clear summer night, and he never met Dick Grayson. He never found Jason Todd trying to steal his hubcaps. He never had any Robins, or any sons.Somehow, Dick and Jason find each other anyway.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Series: World Without Robin 'verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135109
Comments: 20
Kudos: 225





	Bring It All Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Batman: Shadow of the Bat  
> I am vengeance! I am retribution! I am the memory of fifteen thousand children—the screams that can never be exorcised! I am the fear you struck to their hearts—the dark nemesis who brings it all back home!

When Dick Grayson was eight years old, his parents were murdered, and he was kidnapped and sent to become an assassin for the Court of Owls.

In a different world, one in which Bruce Wayne had gone to Haly’s circus on a warm, clear summer night, things would have been different. Bruce would have given him a home, a new purpose, and a well-intentioned, albeit misguided, father figure. Dick would have grown up in a large manor and spent his nights fighting crime in scaly green shorts, well-fed and happy and free. 

This wasn’t that world, though, and on the night that Mary and John Grayson fell to their deaths in front of an audience, Dick Grayson was picked up by a man in an owl mask. He was knocked unconscious, and taken underground. His eyes turned yellow. He learned how to kill, how to sleep in a coffin, and how to respond to a different name. 

Bruce Wayne never knew about the famous Flying Graysons. He never knew the names John and Mary and Richard. The case remained unsolved, Tony Zucco went unapprehended, and the boy that Bruce would have loved in another world was packed off to the Court of Owls to fend for himself. 

Wayne Manor stayed empty and cold. It never saw a Robin besides the birds that nested in Alfred’s gutters in the spring. It was a great loss, but no one ever knew what could have been, and no one mourned. 

To my knowledge, at least. Perhaps, on long nights, Bruce lay awake and felt like something was missing. Perhaps he knew it was quieter than it should have been. But if he did, he kept it to himself.

()()()

On a December night eight years after his parents died, Talon, who had once been known as Richard Grayson, killed his handlers and fled into the cold streets of Gotham.

Talon knew very little about himself or his past. He knew that he had come from somewhere, and that his memories grew blurry the further he went back. He knew his name before had been Grayson. He had a vague recollection of somebody loving him, once, and maybe holding him against their chest, but nobody did that anymore.

Sometimes, in the moments of quiet before a target became visible or an order was given, he would wrap his arms around himself and pretend. Then he would tell himself it was enough, and he would kill who he needed to kill, and they would let him go back to sleep.

Talon knew that was his only purpose—killing. He wasn’t a real boy, so he wasn’t meant to have a family or go places or do fun things. He was meant to take out his targets. He was meant to follow instructions. There was a world out there that he wasn’t meant to see, because his skin was tinted gray and his body was dead and he belonged to the Court of Owls. Talon knew this. He accepted this.

Most importantly—and this was a recent development—Talon knew that the Bat, whoever he was, had destroyed the Court of Owls, which meant that Talon was as free as long as no one else caught him. So he’d killed for hopefully the last time, and bolted.

Now he was curled in a doorway in Park Row, commonly called Crime Alley, at two in the morning. As far as he knew, no one was looking for him. He was very hungry, and desperately tired, but there was nowhere to get food, and nowhere safe enough or warm enough to sleep.

Talons didn’t do well in the cold. It slowed their healing down, and Talon needed that healing to be working constantly. If it stopped working, his cells would stop regenerating, and then his organs would fail, and then he would die. Gotham was cold for the majority of the year, and he was terrified that he would fall asleep and never wake up again.

After so long under the Court, he thought, he had escaped, and now he was going to die anyway without ever being loved again. He stared up at the cloudy yellow sky.

“Hey, kid,” said a voice, and Talon looked down. “What are you doing here?” 

The speaker was a boy in a worn hoodie and ripped jeans. His curly hair was dark, like Talon’s own, and his eyes were blue, like Talon thought his might have been, once. Unlike Talon, however, he was clearly alive, and he was carrying a tire iron.

The boy crouched down in front of him. “Kid. You lost or something?”

Talon had never been called _kid_ before. He knew he wasn’t particularly tall, and he _was_ technically a kid—he was pretty sure he was sixteen or so. But he was definitely both older and taller than the boy in front of him.

“Kid! You speak English? Uh...hablas español? Parlez-vous français?”

Talon said, “cold.”

“Maybe you should go inside, then. You know, somewhere that’s _not_ my doorway?"

There was caution tape over the doorway that Talon was leaning against. He pointed. “Closed.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure, but I live here. So could you move, please?”

Talon stood, slowly, his muscles aching with the effort, and stepped away. He was so cold. His uniform had been meant for armor, not warmth. 

The boy ducked under the caution tape, clearly about to leave, then turned back. “Why are you here? Don’t you have your own place?”

“Not anymore.”

The boy looked at Talon. Talon looked back at him. His face was doing something interesting, like he was arguing with someone, even though it was just the two of them on the sidewalk. His fingers twitched towards his hoodie pocket, then drummed against his thigh. Talon kept his hands clasped in front of him. 

“Okay,” said the boy finally. “It’s, like, ten degrees out. You can come inside. But don’t try anything.”

So Talon followed him inside and down the hall to an apartment. It was still very dark, and it didn’t smell very good, but there was a mattress under the window with blankets piled on top, and the remnants of a fire on the floor. A small collection of books lined one wall. 

The boy handed Talon a blanket. Talon wrapped it around himself and felt his body start to wake up again. Cautiously, he sat down in the corner farthest from the door. It was better in here, out of the wind. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Don’t get used to it,” the boy snarked. “I just don’t want to deal with a corpse on my doorstep. Besides, I can take you. You don’t look like you can fight at all.”

Talon thought about the dozens of targets he’d taken out and almost laughed, but he was too tired. He pointed to his own chest. “Talon.” Then he pointed to the boy, an eyebrow raised.

The boy looked at him suspiciously, then huffed. “Jason,” he said. “My name’s Jason.”

()()()

Let’s rewind.

On the anniversary of the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne that year, Bruce Wayne parked the Batmobile in Crime Alley. He spent long hours stopping the ordinary muggings and assaults. He came back around three in the morning to find nothing out of the ordinary, and all four hubcaps still firmly attached to their tires. He got back in the car, and went home.

Jason Todd had turned twelve that year, and his mother had died a year previous. His father had died two years before that. He made his money selling scrap and boosting tires, and spent his days in the library, as he no longer went to school. Jason was brave, strong, and self-sufficient. He was also mistrustful and exhausted and very, very lonely.

In the world where Bruce Wayne had gone to Haly’s Circus on a warm, clear summer night, he would have come back to find two of his hubcaps gone, and a boy in the middle of removing the third. He would have been hit with a tire iron. He would have laughed for the first time in a long time, bought the boy food, and taken him home. 

Six months later, the second Robin would have taken to the skies, unafraid and with a very strong moral compass. He was Robin, and that would be magic.

But it wasn’t that world, and Bruce Wayne had never gone to Haly’s circus, and there had never been a Robin. He never met Jason Todd, because Jason never tried to lift the hubcaps off the Batmobile. He was busy lifting the hubcaps off a car three blocks south instead. He sold them for a fair price, stocked up on canned food, and bought himself a used copy of _Walden._ It was a good night for him.

So Jason Todd never had a second father, and Bruce Wayne never had a second son. It was a curse, and a blessing—because Jason was never Robin, he never died young. He had turned twelve that year, and he would live to see fifteen.

Two months after the meeting-that-wasn’t, Jason came back from the library and found a guy freezing to death on his doorstep. Against his better judgement, he let him in.

()()()

It wasn’t until the morning light streamed in through the window that Jason realized something was, like, really fucked up about Talon.

He knew he was weird—hell, he was named after bird feet _._ And he didn’t seem like he knew how to talk very well. And he was wearing a unitard and nothing else in December. In New Jersey. Not to mention he was snoozing against a wall, unguarded, in the middle of Crime Alley, which you had to be a colossal dumbass to even consider, because it was _Crime Alley._

So, yeah. He was weird. But Jason didn’t realize just how weird until he saw him in the light and realized his skin was straight up gray. Like, _corpse_ gray. And the unitard was less _unitard_ and more _body armor._ And he had knives on his belt. 

“Jesus Christ,” Jason said aloud. “How the hell am I even alive?”

Talon opened one eye to peek at him. The eye was yellow.

“Jesus _Christ!”_

Jason is entitled to his privacy. I’m not going to tell you he freaked out and threw _Sense & Sensibility _at Talon’s head, and I’m not going to tell you Talon caught it so easily it was kind of embarrassing. I’m not even going to tell you that Jason started screaming _what the fuck what the fuck what even are you_. Whether or not Jason was holding his tire iron up the whole way through Talon’s stuttering explanation is his own business.

But, well. We have to consider all the possibilities. I’m also not going to tell you that’s _not_ what happened. You can draw your own conclusions.

Regardless of how, exactly, they got there, Jason found himself pacing back and forth as Talon sat warily on the mattress, watching him piece it all together.

“Okay,” said Jason. “So you’re an assassin.”

“Not anymore.”

“Whatever. Your real name is Grayson.”

“Yes. I think so.”

“You’re, like, undead? And you have magic that heals you all the time?”

“Chemical.”

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet, dude. Someone famous said that. Haven’t you seen _Thor?”_

“No.”

“Right, yeah. Assassin. Ex-assassin. Anyways, you power down if you get too cold? Like a car battery?”

“...Car battery?”

“Yeah, when it gets too cold car batteries will—nevermind. So your organization is gone? The organization that did this?

“The Bat stopped it.”

“Batman. Yeah. Okay. And...you don’t have anywhere to go.”

“No.”

“Okay.” Jason stopped pacing and studied Talon—Grayson—carefully. He looked a few years older than Jason was, and way taller, but he managed to curl in on himself and look very small. His fingers were tapping anxiously on his knees, and he was staring at the ground. 

It was a weird story, but then again, it was a weird city. When there was too much crime, the cops lit a giant lamp to summon a guy dressed like a bat. There was an alarm system specifically for when an insane clown broke out of prison. Shit happened. Besides, it really did explain a lot.

“Grayson,” Jason said slowly, an idea starting to form.

Grayson looked up. His yellow eyes were still freaky, but once you got over that, they were also kind of cool. “Yes?”

“If you were an assassin, you’re sneaky, right? Like, good at hiding and all that?”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic.” Jason tucked his tire iron in his back pocket and grinned. “In that case, how would you like to help me at work tonight?”

“...Yes?”

“Sweet. I’ve always wanted to expand the business.”

He held out his hand to shake Grayson’s. Grayson stared at it uncomprehendingly. “It’s a handshake, man. Take my hand with your right...there we go.”

He tugged on his shoes. “Okay, we gotta get you some clothes. You’re lucky it’s winter, it won’t be hard to cover up the...you know. Corpse...ness. And then after that, I was gonna go to the library. It’s the last Wednesday of the month, there’s free donuts for kids.”

“Library? Donuts?”

“Grayson. Dude. Holy shit.” Jason slapped a dramatic hand to his chest—he felt lighter, somehow, like he could joke around more. “We gotta go, like, right now.”

“Why?”

“Just come on, man! This is gonna change your life!”

Grayson stood up, and followed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I am almost definitely gonna do a sequel. Gimme a holler at @buteojamaicensis on tumblr.


End file.
